John Howard was in power for 11 years (1996-2007) making him Australia's second longest serving Prime Minister. Australian democracy has no set terms, so leaders can keep ruling if they keep winning elections. Another quirk of our democracy allows incumbents to decide the date of the election within an approximately 3 month window. Until Kevin Rudd was elected in November 2007, there were many Australians who had no political consciousness without John Howard.

The legacies of the Howard years are negative ones. The only nice thing people say about him (and his supporters repeat this a lot) was that he was 'good for the economy'. That's what they say about Pinochet! They also used to say Howard would keep interest rates down (which was a lie because governments don't control interest rates). But they don't say that anymore because interest rates have dropped substantially while Rudd has been PM.

 During one of Howard's election campaigns (he contested five - 1996; 1998; 2001; 2004; 2007) he made promises to the Australian people, but broke those promises after winning re-election THEN justified his lies by saying they were 'non-core' promises. The man has chutzpah. So here I will discuss some of Howard's most racist actions while in office - Children Overboard; the War on Terror; and his refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generations.

 Children Overboard

The number of immigrants entering Australia illegally is miniscule compared to the US or Spain, but the Howard government made a really big deal about them. In October 2001, just before a federal election, a "Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel" (commonly referred to as SIEV 4), was intercepted by the HMAS Adelaide in Australia's northern waters. The boat was a Norwegian fishing vessel named "Tampa." Hundreds of asylum seekers were on board and the Howard government claimed they had thrown children overboard in an attempt to get rescued. Howard also wanted us to believe that the asylum seekers had deliberately sunk the ship. It was total bullshit of course. Howard just wanted to portray himself as tough on border protection (it's important to appear tough on something to win elections), and it worked. The controversy enabled the Howard government to be re-elected in November 2001.

 The Children Overboard affair was probably the most damaging act to Australians by Howard during his time in office. Most of the people on board that ship were Muslim and by demonizing them Howard mined the latent racism of white Australia for his own political gains. The repercussions of this act are very serious. I believe it normalized racism in this country, and affected who we are as Australians. Australia's racist past is very recent. It takes a long time for some people to learn that racism is immoral, and Howard reversed a lot of progress. A few years later there was a massive race riot between Anglo Australians and Lebanese Australians in Cronulla, a beachside suburb of Sydney. Howard had made it ok to be racist.

The Howard government's policy towards refugees was to incarcerate them in a constellation of high security prisons throughout the continent, including some offshore on the Pacific island nation of Nauru (far away from the media, get it?). The most high profile and securitized of them all was Baxter Detention Centre, located in the South Australian desert, about an hour outside the town of Port Augusta. At night, the lights of Baxter are brighter than Port Augusta, and several ten to twelve feet high fences, some of which are electrified and some of which are crowned with razor wire, surround the facility. It cost Australians thousands and thousands of dollars in taxes to operate. The water supply alone required an extensive infrastructure and thousands of dollars because deserts don't have water sources large enough to supply the daily needs of high-tech prisons. There have been heart-breaking reports of abuse and torture at Baxter. Thankfully, the prison closed in August 2007.

 War on Terror

I'm not sure how well this is known outside Australia, but Australian troops were involved in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Australia is a part of the Coalition of the Willing. There were massive protests in February 2003 in most major Australian cities. Howard and his ministers repeated the line about WMDs and provided all the usual lies for starting the conflict, like the one about Saddam Hussein working with Al Qaeda. Yet Howard largely escaped the wrath Bush and Blair copped, probably due to Australia's relative standing in the world compared to the US and UK, and the relatively small size of the Australian contingent deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kevin Rudd has since pulled most Aussie soldiers out of Iraq, but our troops still remain deployed in Afghanistan.

The Stolen Generations

From the late 1800s to the 1970s (that's not a typo), successive Australian governments had a policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their parents and relocating them amongst white families. The official rationale was that children needed to be protected from abusive parents or that it was done to try to stop Aborigines from dying, as Indigenous communities across the continent where decimated by European disease (and murder). Yet the ‘child removal policy' was really about assimilation and another way to eradicate Aborigines. It was an atrocity. It's unbelievable that it was still official government policy as recently as the 1970s! In April 2000, Howard's Aboriginal Affairs minister - John Herron, officially questioned the existence of the stolen generations in Parliament. His argument centred around the word 'generation', as in - how can it constitute a 'generation' if only(!) 10% of Aboriginal children had been stolen? Sickening. Howard refused to apologise to the Stolen Generations, labelling those who sought an apology as having a 'black armband view of history' (as opposed to those who would celebrate Australian history as being a victory for Progress against a harsh environment and hostile locals). Howard argued apologies were merely symbolic, and said he wanted to focus on doing something practical. Now this could have been a reasonable argument if practical things were being done, but they weren't. After Kevin Rudd issued his formal apology (only about 3 months after taking office) there was an immense sense of joy experienced throughout the country. The apology was broadcast on massive TV screens in every major city. Huge masses of people gathered together in public places to watch. People were crying and hugging and I felt so much better about being Australian. The collective sense of shame was gone. There must have been some type of collective grief amongst Australians that Howard had tried, and failed, to repress. Now it had finally been alleviated. 

 Interestingly, the issuing of a formal apology to Indigenous Australians was not something widely discussed by Kevin Rudd and his team during the election campaign. It may have been mentioned as a possibility, but it was not a focus even though it was done only 3 months after the election was won. It was not mentioned because Howard was notoriously adept (as demonstrated by the Children Overboard affair) at using controversial topics of race to his advantage. Rudd was able to beat Howard by agreeing with him on everything except a few key issues, such as the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the removal of Aussie troops from Iraq, and the abolishment of the WorkChoices legislation, which would have given employers even more power over workers but was spun by Howard's party as providing employees with 'choice.' WorkChoices was highly unpopular and was a major factor in Kevin Rudd's victory.

 So now Australians are waiting to see if Rudd will do more than apologise, and if he will create a humane refugee policy. Racism in Australia is still prevalent, but there have been several great breakthroughs and the population is much more ethnically diverse than it was even ten years ago, which will hopefully lead to more understanding. So we watch and we wait, and we do what can be done to make our society more just and fair.

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CLARIFIERS

John Howard is a member of the Liberal Party, so in Australian politics it is important to differentiate between ‘small l' liberals (left-wingers) and Liberals (right-wingers). His government was a coalition between his Liberal party and the National party, so you will hear his government being referred to as either ‘the Liberals' or ‘the Coalition.'

 The Torres Strait Islanders are the Indigenous people of the Torres Strait islands, located in Torres Strait, the body of water between Cape York Peninsula (far northeast of Australia) and New Guinea. They have their own flag but the Islands are considered part of the state of Queensland.

 The Black Armband View of History is (I think) a reference to the practice of sports teams taking to the field wearing black armbands after a relative of a teammate has died. It is typically used by the Right as a criticism towards those on the Left who acknowledge the destruction of Aboriginal civilization.